The Unfortunate Son (4 page)

“Maybe you’re missing more than an ear,” said his father all too often.

Luc was no stranger to his father’s insults, but he was learning to shrug them off. He was a wise, able boy who loved his mother and his little brothers. Until his work as a swineherd in Mouette, he had spent little time with anyone outside his immediate family. They lived a very quiet life; they avoided the fishing village along the shore below and rarely visited the farming village up the road except to attend the tiny hill chapel on Sundays and holy days. For as long as Luc could remember, their only visitors were the same two soldiers, who arrived twice yearly, in the spring and fall. The soldiers brought white flour, cheeses, honey, and woolen cloth for Luc’s mother, Blanche. They brought a barrel of wine for his father, Pascal, and sometimes shoes for the boys. They talked to Pascal privately, but before they left, they always spoke with Luc and his brothers, asking how they spent their days and what they needed, or even what they wanted. Four years ago, the older soldier, a knight named Sir Guy, had given Luc a puppy. Sir Guy said the dog was for Luc alone, a gift because Luc was turning into a fine young man. For once, Pascal said nothing.

The soldiers had not come this past spring, and Luc had asked his mother why.

“Hush,” Blanche had said. “Don’t say another word about it, Luc. Especially to your father.”

Luc rarely said anything to his father, but he remembered earlier years when his father had been kinder, and Luc had been happier. His brother Hervé was born when Luc was two, and baby Pierre followed six years later. The three boys were healthy, and the harvests were good, but Pascal began to drink after Hervé was born, and over time, he went from a hardworking family man to a sullen drunk and, increasingly, a mean one. As his father became more difficult, Luc noticed that his mother had stopped singing. His mother used to sing all the time. Before Pierre was born, Blanche would put baby Hervé on her hip, and taking Luc by the hand, she would sing softly to him as they climbed the hills beyond the grove. They would look down at their house, and she would ask Luc if he could see his father in the olive grove. Could he spot their chimney? Could he see the pigs in their pen? Could he see the chickens? Luc loved her games. He squinted and concentrated until he not only could point out the chickens but could tell which was the rooster and which was the spotted old hen. His mother hid tiny pieces of broken crockery in the dirt, and Luc raced to spot them. Blanche was surprised by all that he could do. When Luc was no more than four, Pascal was taking him to hunt because the remarkable little boy could hear a rabbit breathe and see the movement of a
whisker. But that changed as Hervé grew. Hervé had never been good at his mother’s games; he did not have Luc’s quickness or his gifts. Now, when he went hunting, Pascal took neither boy, and his mother’s games had ceased. Now, nothing Luc did was good enough for his father.

Cadeau barked and ran ahead to the house. Luc urged the pigs along with the staff. Pierre scampered to his older brother and threw his muddy arms around him.

“Luc! Luc! Papa said you drowned in a puddle.”

Leaning the staff against the farmhouse, Luc lifted his mud-splattered little brother and swung him around and around by his arms. When Luc put him down, Pierre giggled and stumbled in a dizzy circle.

“Are you hungry, Luc?” called his mother from the doorway.

“You gave the boy cheese as he left. And he must have had nuts and berries with the pigs. Or he should have,” said Luc’s father, who stepped in front of his wife and stood on the threshold with his arms folded across his chest.

Luc said nothing. Their farmhouse was stone, a long rectangular building, much larger than the fisherman’s cottage. The separate kitchen opened into a courtyard with a well and a generous shade tree. On the far side was a small stable, to which Luc led the pigs. He filled a pail with well water and rinsed his face and his muddy feet. Luc’s legs ached, and his shirt was damp; he was tired and very glad for Beatrice’s soup. He dried his face on his shoulder and smiled. It
had been a fine day. He looked forward to tomorrow, when he would again see Pons and Mattie. And the girl.

Every day, throughout October and most of November, Luc shepherded about two dozen pigs from Mouette to the woodlands above. Most of the men in that village were fishermen, but each household kept at least one young pig, raising it in the spring and summer on table scraps and market waste, until the fall, when the pig was fattened on the acorns, beechnuts, and chestnuts that covered the forest floor. At the end of November, the pigs would be slaughtered and turned into meat for the winter. Luc’s last stop at the end of every afternoon, after he had returned all the other pigs, was the cottage of Pons and Mattie and Beatrice, where they always saved supper for him.

“Have you ever been out on the sea?” asked Mattie one day as Luc was finishing his soup.

“Never,” replied the boy.

“Would you like to go out in my boat one day?” asked Pons.

The boy nodded. “If my father will allow it.”

“Tell him you’ll bring home some fresh mullet.”

Though he longed to go out in Pons’s boat, Luc never asked his father. Their silver-leafed olive trees were filling with purple fruit, and the swineherd recovered in mid-November, just as Luc was needed for the harvest.

On his last night with the pigs, Luc was very quiet at the table in Pons’s house.

“I hope you’ll visit us after the harvest,” said Mattie.

“Yes,” said Beatrice. “We’ll miss you. And Cadeau.”

“I’ll return. I promise,” said Luc. “But tomorrow I’ll be picking olives.”

“Come back after the harvest. Maybe take a ride in Pons’s boat, too,” added Beatrice.

Luc nodded and waved good-bye.

EACH DAY, AFTER the sun was high and the dew dried, Luc and his brothers scoured the ground for the wind-fallen olives. Afterward, Blanche spread a rough woven cloth under an olive tree. With wooden rakes, Luc and Hervé combed its branches while Pierre crawled on the cloth beneath and sorted though the growing piles of olives, discarding twigs and leaves. They dumped the cloth-load of picked olives into a basket and moved to the next tree. After the trees were raked, Luc and Hervé strapped sacks to their waists. Climbing narrow ladders, they stretched to snap off any remaining olives. The family could harvest four or five trees each day. At the end of the second week, when all the olives on his forty trees were picked, Pascal would borrow a donkey from the
miller and haul the full baskets up the road to the mill. In return for a portion of the oil, their olives would be pressed, and the oil would be poured into clay jugs for sale in the markets.

It was hard work; the olives had to be picked as soon as they ripened, before they began to spot, or the oil would be ruined. Pascal was a strong man, but by the middle of each afternoon he was useless and asleep, and the work was left to Luc and his brothers and their mother. On the last day of the harvest, Pascal tripped over a rake that was propped against a tree and smashed a couple of toes on a rock. He grabbed Luc by the back of his shirt and yelled at him.

“You careless idiot. See what you did? You’re not fit for this work.”

Luc glared at his father. Maybe it had been his rake, but there had been nothing careless about where it was placed. He was the best picker in the family, and he knew it. And he suspected his father knew it as well, and that only seemed to make matters worse. But Luc said nothing; he was almost too tired to care.

That night, he fell asleep in no time. The harvest was exhausting, and his arms and shoulders ached. The rake blistered his hands, and his legs were scratched and scabbed from the branches. He awoke at dawn the next day and slipped away from the straw bed he shared with his brothers. Luc sat outside with Cadeau and watched the sunrise; the gray sky turned pink, illuminating the reds and yellows of autumn trees. Maybe his father was right. Even though he was a good
picker, maybe the olive grove wasn’t where he belonged. He buried his face in his dog’s furry shoulder, and whispered.

“Think I could be a fisherman, Cadeau?”

Later that morning, to celebrate the end of the olive harvest, Luc’s family gathered around the scrubbed kitchen table. The door was propped open, filling the room with sunlight. Blanche heaped a steaming platter with rabbit and onions. The rabbit had been a gift from one of the villagers to Luc on his last day of work with the pigs; Blanche had killed and dressed it that morning. The boys wolfed down the meat, too busy eating to speak a word. Pascal was slumped at the far end of the table, tearing off bits of bread, eating no rabbit. Blanche spooned out roasted red pears that had been given to Luc by another pig owner.

“How come you got pears and rabbits, Luc?” asked Pierre, between bites.

“What’s it like in the village?” asked Hervé.

As the boys ate, Luc recounted tales of the fishing village. During the harvest he had been too busy to tell his brothers about Mouette, and now he entertained them with stories of the carpenter who had no teeth, and the baker who had eleven children.

“More, Luc. Tell more,” begged Pierre with a greasy smile; the little boy’s curl-framed face was slick with rabbit grease and pear juice.

When Luc began to describe the fisherman’s cottage, Hervé leaned forward, and Pierre’s eyes grew huge. Blanche
asked questions about Pons and Mattie, but his father said nothing.

“Please can we see the fish?” said Pierre, clapping his hands.

“Yes, please, Father?” asked Hervé. “I would love to see the fish cottage.”

“No,” said Pascal. “It’s a wonder no one complained that this lazy boy spent more time in the village than in the forest.”

Luc shoved away the rest of his food.

“Hervé, would you have wasted time like Luc?” asked Pascal, pushing himself back from the table.

“Luc always came home tired, Papa. He worked hard,” answered Hervé.

“You’re too generous, Son. You always defend him.”

Then, cursing under his breath about the toes he had stubbed, Pascal limped to a shelf and took down his old knife. It had a smooth horn handle and a sharp blade.

“I won this knife in a fight when I was a little older than you, Hervé. I was the strongest boy around. Like you, Hervé. Now it’s yours.”

Pascal handed it to the boy, and Hervé stared at the knife in his hand.

“Thank you, Papa,” he mumbled, looking anywhere but at Luc.

Luc stood. He took a deep breath and charged from the house, slamming the door. He whistled, and Cadeau
bounded from the garden. Luc was sitting under a tree scratching his dog’s ears when Hervé and Pierre tumbled outside.

“Papa is really mad,” said Pierre.

“Hush!” said Hervé. “Sorry, Luc. The knife—”

“As if I wanted that old thing,” said Luc.

“Don’t lie. You wanted the knife.”

Luc stood up. “I never expected the knife. Or anything else from him.”

“But—”

“Leave me alone, Hervé. Shut your mouth, and leave me alone.”

“It’s not my fault,” said Hervé, squatting to pat the dog.

Luc swatted Hervé’s arm away from Cadeau. “I said shut your mouth.”

“I
am
stronger than you, Luc. Besides, you have a dog,” said Hervé, still squatting.

“Not thanks to Father,” said Luc, and he shoved Hervé.

Hervé rocked backward and bumped Pierre, who tripped and fell face down. Luc helped the little boy to his feet. He was crying, and blood dribbled down his chin. When Pierre wiped his face and saw the blood on his hand, he began to scream. Pascal rushed, hobbling, from the house. Luc was kneeling, dabbing his brother’s cut lip with his shirt when his father slapped him hard across his face.

“Get away from Pierre. You have done enough damage. You broke my toes, and now this,” he snarled, pointing at the little boy.

“It was an accident.”

“Get out of my sight. Cursed freak.”

Luc glimpsed his mother watching him from the doorway. She said nothing. He rubbed his cheek and turned away. Pierre was sobbing as Pascal lifted him and carried him back into the house. He slammed the door, leaving Hervé and Luc in the garden.

“Papa is angry, but it won’t last,” said Hervé.

“He hates me. Why wouldn’t he? I
am
a freak. And a weakling.”

“You’re neither, Luc.”

“There’s no place for me here,” said Luc, touching his face where a red handprint marked his cheek.

“Take the knife, Luc,” said Hervé, holding it out.

“No. He gave it to you. But go inside and get my shoes for me, Hervé.”

“Your shoes? Why? Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back tonight. But I won’t stay here much longer,” said Luc.

Hervé came out with Luc’s shoes under his shirt. He handed them to Luc, who sat on the ground and pulled the soft leather over his feet. He stood up and wiggled his toes.

“Thanks, Hervé,” said Luc, patting his brother’s shoulder.

As Luc headed down the hill, away from the olive grove, he turned to wave at Hervé, who stood watching him leave. Then he looked down at his shoes. Except for Sunday church,
Luc was always barefoot. These shoes had been too big for the past season, but now they fit well, and he liked the way he couldn’t feel the stones underfoot as he began to hurry down the path. Cadeau loped along, sometimes nosing the boy in the back of his knees, sometimes whining, his tail always wagging. Towards the bottom of the hill, Luc stopped and looked at his dog.

“What is it, boy? Do you know where we’re heading?”

Cadeau woofed, and they both began to run toward the fishing village.

THE HOUSES OF Mouette were strung below Luc along a narrow road. Cadeau barked, and Luc stopped running to greet the baker, who was strolling uphill with three of his sons.

“Good afternoon, Luc,” said the baker. “We’ve missed you.”

“It’s good to see you,” said Luc once he caught his breath.

The run had reddened his face, and he breathed deeply. He bent over and put his hands on his knees for a moment.